Jedi Academy-2 using Chivalry MW combat system?

Since LucasArts got “reorganized” this past week there has been all sorts of discussions about favorite games they’ve made over the years.

I won’t get into the actual change in business model, either. Honestly some of the better Star Wars games have not been made directly by Lucas Arts.

If they make BattleFront-3 for example, wouldn’t you want DICE to get a license to be the ones to make it? I would be happy with that.

However, given this is the Chivalry forum I’m on I wanted to propose something else.

How about a new Jedi Academy game, and now that I’ve played a really great sword combat game called Chivalry: Medieval Warfare I can’t help but put them together. Jedi Academy was great, but the sword fighting was a bit like flailing around and hoping you somehow land a fatal hit. Chivalry seems to be very popular for a sword combat game, so lets replace claymores and quarter staffs with lightsabers and double ended lightsabers.

If they could even get Torn Banner a license to just make a simple Jedi Knight DLC pack for Chivarly, I would buy it no problem. Free updates are always fun, but paying cash money for a Chivalry Star Wars DLC is a must buy.

It doesn’t even need to be much more than a reskin of Chivalry into a Star Wars motif. Just leave the weapon stats as they currently are, but make it look like Star Wars with new character art, maps, and sound effects.

Obviously a few changes would help, like ditching a bunch of weapon types that don’t make sense like flails, polearms (parry animation doesn’t work for Star Wars), and “archers” with the “bow” weapon can be changed to troopers with blaster rifles that take time to charge up a 3 round burst. Kite and Tower Shields can be changed to “force defense” and you can hold a parry and deflect a blaster shot with your lightsaber.

I did like Jedi Knight/Jedi Academy, but at the end of the day, how far can you really go with it? While I suspect a new Jedi Knight project would be financially lucrative, it would also be creatively restrictive and likely have a severe impact on the ultimate quality of the game. While there’s all kinds of things that could be added as new dimensions to the gameplay due to force powers and Star Wars weapons, just as much would have be stripped out, as you suggest.

To me, if any such thing were to happen where TBS would or could invest their efforts in such a project, I’d hope their own creativity and the lessons they’ve learned from Chivalry to make a new, unique title with a style all its own rather than trying to shoehorn gameplay into a movie universe. I’d certainly like to see a stylistic Marvel vs. Capcom to Chivalry’s Street Fighter, but the Star Wars license would be a waste. I would hope they’d decline.

Smells like an easy mod. Take a greatsword, add lightsabre sounds/graphics and make the damage an instant kill. Remove blood but keep limb loss. Add force jumps and maybe a super long reach kick as a force push.

Jedi Academy was a great game, but I actually did NOT like the sword combat from it. It really was a lot of jumping, flailing, and hoping. There wasn’t much skill involved. Chivalry feels like the first game that has actual sword fighting in it. Or at least if feels that way to me.

A Star Wars mod for Chivalry would be very, very fun. Just remove a bunch of weapon types that don’t make a lot of sense, or change them a bit (such as a short range, but fast weapon that is called Upside Down lightsaber, aka Force Unleashed style), make “shields” that deflect not only melee attacks, but range shots as well are just parries that you can hold indefinitely (if you equipped that force power). You can tell a Knight has his shield up as you can see the guy holding his saber sideways all the time. Aim for his foot.

I do like the idea of replacing archery with a couple of blaster rifles. You just use them like crossbows, but are not required to reload them or stop moving while waiting for them to be useable again. I would also have them fire 3 blasterbolts at a time, although that is just cosmetic. The first shot is the one that counts. They are NOT machine guns and cannot fire continuously. You shoot your tri-burst, wait a few seconds for the gun to ready itself, and then shoot again. That almost fits with the lore as well since you don’t see troopers laying down suppressing fire in a hail of laser bolts. The scenes from the movies generally do have the guys shoot at a pretty low rate of fire. You shoot, wait, shoot, wait, ect. It never made sense, but then again it is just a movie.

Armor? Yes. Knights wear armor like Clone Wars Jedi Generals, while medium guys have less, and light guys have none. It might be made from ABS plastic, but you can take more than one hit. They’re Jedi’s after all. I would replace blood soaked “wounded” look of CMW with blaster scorch marks and slashes texture on your clean, blue or red sci-fi armor. Or White vs Black if you want another look.

Force Powers? Probably. A long range “force push” using the kick effect might work, but it would need to be tempered by using a lot of stamina/force power up to prevent it from being spammed. I would have “kick” replaced by a short range force push, as nobody is going to interrupt a Jedi Knight with a Force Block (i.e. tower shield) lightsaber with their foot. Just animated the “kick” as shoving out your open palm and sound effect from Darth Maul vs Obi-Wan being knocked into the pit in Episode-1.

Super Jump and super speed powers could work.

Force lightning and throw-chunk-of-scenery can replace the throwing axes and throwing knives.

Essentially replace all of the stuff from the right-hand weapon menu with Force Powers of some kind.

I’ve played it when it was just a mod and was very highly ranked, albeit via fighting tons of bad players and winning the few duels I did against high ranked players, and it is far more skill based than Chivalry, because even though blocking is at times partly a guessing game, you can generally react to everything if you have korean reflexes, you can partially block attacks even if you wrongly guessed the attack direction, and you have a lot more health so blocking is more about mindgames and less about luck.

Block 100% missing half the time and taking out half your health like in Chivalry is just not cool…